When Danny Boyle accepted directorship of the London 2012 opening ceremony, he was no doubt aware of the unique and great responsibility he was taking on.

The opening of every Olympics in recent memory has been marked by three or four hour-long performance extravaganzas, as the host country attempts to convince the world by sheer glitz, size and spectacle that its Games will be the greatest yet.

Beijing, of course, blew away any sense of proportion in 2008, when it spent a reported $100m on a show watched by 2 billion that most agree will be impossible to beat.

Before that, budgets had been steadily climbing since Barcelona launched its Games in 1992 with what would become the forerunner to the quintessential modern ceremony, costing £10m. With his budget of £27m, Danny Boyle’s show looks almost modest compared to others: back in 2004 Athens put aside £35m for the show.

The opening ceremony wasn’t always characterised by such extravagance. For years, organising committees didn't have enough money to put on anything more showbiz than a parade of athletes and a torchlit cauldron.

However despite their scale, the modern ceremonies retain all the traditional elements decreed by the IOC. The protocol, developed over the years as different elements have been added, lays out guidelines for the alphabetical order of the athletes' march, the symbolic release of pigeons, the raising of the Olympic flag and the taking of the Olympic Oath.

1896 Athens, Panathinaiko Stadium

14 nations and 245 athletes competed at the first modern international Olympic games, and 80,000 spectators attended the opening ceremony. The song that would be officially designated the Olympic anthem in the 1958 Tokyo Games was performed for the first time, composed by Spiros Samaras with words by Kostis Palamas.

1908 London, White City Stadium

The enormous White City stadium held 150,000 spectators, with seating for 68,000. However, with tickets priced at eight guineas for a box seat and two shillings and sixpence for a seat in an upper tier, it was not the most affordable show in town.

During the ceremony, spectators were treated to a display by gymnasts from the London Polytechnic and a procession of athletes. Mild controversy arose when the US flag was somehow omitted from the display above the stadium, convincing the Americans that the British were biased against them and provoking the US flag bearer, Ralph Rose, to refuse to dip his flag to the royal box as an act of defiance.

1920 Antwerp, Olympisch Stadion

Founder of the International Olympic Committee Pierre de Coubertin created the Olympic flag that was flown for the first time in Antwerp, after its official presentation four years earlier at the Paris Games. The flag's design of five interlocking rings to represent five continents is still used, but its accompanying motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger), quickly disappeared.

The Antwerp opening ceremony was also significant because it was the first time that doves were released as a symbol of peace, and that the Athlete’s Oath was introduced. Belgian water polo player and swimmer Victor Boin was the first athlete to take it, swearing on the Olympic flag on behalf of all the athletes to respect the rules of the Games. In ancient Greek Olympics it had been customary to make a similar oath, but with the entrails of an animal as the object on which it focused.

1928 Amsterdam, Olympisch Stadion

Two key traditions were established in Amsterdam, the first being the Olympic flame, which was lit during the opening ceremony to reflect the ancient Greek respect for fire as a divine element. The set order for the parade of nations was also confirmed, with Greece leading the procession and the host country bringing up the rear.

1936 Berlin, Olympic Stadium

Hitler's Olympics in 1936 gave the opening ceremony format a dramatic overhaul. Hitler was not a sports fan, but was eventually convinced by his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, that the Games would be an opportunity to showcase his vision of the 'new Germany'.

The ceremony featured 7,000 children acting out Aryan ideals in terms of sport, honour and community. The music was composed by two promising young German musicians, Carl Orff and Werner Egk, and Richard Strauss wrote an "Olympische Hymne".

Anticipation built over whether the athletes attending from 51 nations would give the Nazi salute, with the arm straight and pointing forward, or the more defiant Olympic salute, with the arm out to the right, as they passed Hitler in the parade. Most countries gave an ambiguous-looking salute to avoid trouble, though the British and Americans refused to raise an arm at all.

The torch relay also took place for the first time in 1936, when it journeyed from Olympia, in Greece, to Germany, carried by around 3000 runners.

1948 London, Wembley Stadium

The 'Austerity Games' were the first to be held since 1936 due to World War II. 85,000 spectators watched as 2,500 racing pigeons were released and the flame was lit by athlete John Mark, to a 21 gun salute.

The opening ceremony cost £600,000 to stage, and the BBC reportedly paid £1000 for the right to broadcast it.

To mark the first Games in 12 years, former gold medal winner and Chairman of the Organising Committee Lord Burghley opened his speech with the following words to King George VI:

"Your Majesty: The hour has struck. A visionary dream has today become a glorious reality. At the end of the worldwide struggle in 1945, many institutions and associations were found to have withered and only the strongest had survived. How, many wondered, had the great Olympic Movement prospered?"

1956 Melbourne, Cricket Ground

The Olympic flame was kept alight in a miner's lamp as it was flown to Australia in a plane, and soon became the subject of the greatest prank in Olympic history.

Set up by students from the University of Sydney protesting against the Nazi-invented torch relay, the hoax involved Barry Larkin and eight other students delivering a fake torch, made from a wooden chair leg and topped with a pair of flaming underpants held in a plum pudding can, to Sydney mayor Pat Hills.

The plan succeeded: police didn't look closely enough at Larkin running through the streets, assuming he was the real runner, Harry Dillon. The mayor was too busy talking and didn't look at the torch he was handed, so Larkin slipped away unnoticed as Hills held it aloft. Despite the uproar that followed when the plot was uncovered, the ensuing Games were a success – known in later years as the 'Friendly Games'.

1964 Tokyo, Olympic Stadium

The 1964 Games were the first in Asia and the organisers chose 19-year-old Yoshinori Sakai (known as 'Baby Hiroshima'), who was born close to the blast zone on the day an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, to light the torch.

1984 Los Angeles, Memorial Coliseum

Los Angeles was a turning point in terms of opening ceremony scale. The last couple of decades had seen cultural dances and traditional music played as the historic elements of the ceremonies were carried out, but they were nothing compared to the entertainment value of the LA Games.

Hundreds of grand pianos were set up on the stadium's floor, and a spaceman powered by a Bell Aerosystems jetpack flew over the delighted audience. On his exit, hundreds of white balloons carrying the word 'Welcome' in 140 different languages were released into the sky by the performers.

Finally, every single spectator held up a card from under their seat, to reveal the national flags of all the competing nations in an incredible mosaic. The competitive bar was set high.

1988 Seoul, Olympic Stadium

Unfortunately, the Seoul Olympics will be remembered for shattering what had become a key Olympic opening ceremony tradition.

Just after the Olympic flame was lit in its cauldron in the stadium, live doves were released on either side. Most flew off as intended, but a few of the more dozy birds stopped to perch on the edge of the cauldron and were scorched or burnt alive. After this, organisers stopped using real birds and replaced them with symbolic representations.

More positive elements of the ceremony included a mass taekwondo demonstration and the formation of the Olympic rings in the sky above the stadium by a skydiving team.

1992 Barcelona, Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc

By 1992, director Ric Birch had established himself as official producer of Olympic opening ceremonies after his involvement in Los Angeles in 1984. He went on to assist with both the Sydney and Beijing ceremonies in later years.

In Barcelona, his main coup in a £10m show was commissioning Paralympic athlete Antonio Rebollo to light the Olympic torch by firing a flaming arrow towards it. The other great highlight of the night was a performance of ‘Barcelona’ composed by Freddie Mercury and recorded as a duet with Montserrat Caballé. Mercury had died from Aids eight months earlier.

1996 Atlanta

83,000 spectators were thrilled when the secret torch lighter was revealed as Muhammed Ali, severely weakened by Parkinson's disease but able to hold the flame to the cauldron. His participation famously moved President Bill Clinton to tears, though several other elements in the £15m ceremony could also have been held to account, including Celine Dion's performance of The Power of the Dream and Gladys Knight's Georgia on my Mind.

2000 Sydney, Stadium Australia

Ric Birch came into his own once more, managing 12,697 performers in an extravagant show costing £20m. The torch was lit by Aboriginal sprinter Cathy Freeman to mark the 100th anniversary of women’s inclusion in the Games and a crowd of dancing fire breathers advanced across the stadium representing the approach of a bushfire.

Live streaming of the show was controversially banned after the FBI warned that hackers and anti-Olympic protesters might sabotage the event. Anti-games feeling had reached an all-time high the year before the show after the organising committee commissioned 1,300 teenage musicians to play in the ceremony, only to change their minds and cancel the deal later.

2004 Greece, the Olympic Stadium in Maroussi

Though it now seems unthinkable given Greece's parlous economic state, a £35m budget was set aside for director Dimitris Papaioannou's homage to the country where the Games began. 72,000 people filled the Olympic Stadium to watch 2,600 Greek performers, and the ceremony was the first to be broadcast on high definition TV.

Opening with a 28-second countdown to mark the number of Games held since Athens was last the host, the show continued with memorable drama. A giant pool of water flooded the floor of the stadium, and was drained in three minutes flat to allow the athletes to start their parade. Later, as singer Björk launched into her song Oceania, her dress steadily unfurled over the athletes below into an enormous sheet, onto which was projected a map of the world.

2008 Beijing, the National Stadium (Bird’s Nest)

91,000 people, including 11,000 VIPs, crowded into the Bird's Nest Stadium for the $100m show of a lifetime. As August 8, chosen as a lucky date, approached, seats in the stadium began selling for as much as £15,000 on eBay.

The spectators were not disappointed: over 15,000 performers had practised for 12 months to put on an incredibly polished display. Few of those who watched, even on television, could forget the 2,008 drummers playing special Fou drums with inbuilt LED lights, working precisely in time with each other to illuminate giant numbers counting down to the official opening time. The 35,000 fireworks lighting up the Bird's Nest in red, orange, pink and white were the spectacular end to Zhang Yimou's ceremony.